This team has developed the Great Lakes Impact Investment Platform. The platform showcases investments (green bonds, environmental impact bonds, and other lending instruments) that deliver positive Great Lakes environmental outcomes and contribute to the vitality of the region. The platform also tracks the performance of these investments against key environmental outcomes for the Great Lakes. These outcomes are gallons of water saved, kilowatts of energy saved, tons of carbon reduced or stored, tons of nutrients reduced, and acres of forest and farmland certified.

The platform is designed to promote the linkages between financial instruments and the work that those instruments support to deliver environmental and social impacts across four themes – forestry, smart water systems, agriculture and energy. The team expects that by increasing attention to such investments, investors will be more motivated to make them.

The team’s goal is to create a self-sustaining platform that will drive more impact investment and environmental improvement for the region. The project’s final year will be focused on establishing a sustainable business model and transitioning to that model.

This project was developed through a project design award where the team met with Great Lakes data and impact investing experts, developed a reporting system for the platform that tracks impact, and designed the platform.